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HP Stats Hardware

Has Lenovo Taken the Top PC Manufacturer Spot From HP? 99

Posted by samzenpus from the king-of-the-hill dept.
angry tapir writes "Lenovo has taken the crown from Hewlett-Packard to become the world's top seller of PCs, research firm Gartner said in a study released this week. Lenovo took the top spot during a quarter in which PC shipments dropped overall due to a weak economy and pressure from mobile devices. Of the top four PC vendors, only Lenovo was able to grow its shipments. Its PC sales increased by almost 10 percent to 13.77 million units, giving it 15.7 percent of the market, Gartner said." Not so fast, says analysis firm IDC. They say that HP is still in the lead but Lenovo is very close.
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Has Lenovo Taken the Top PC Manufacturer Spot From HP? More

Has Lenovo Taken the Top PC Manufacturer Spot From HP?

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  • Never trust Gartner on anything... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mindmaster064 ( 690036 ) on Thursday October 11, 2012 @04:44PM (#41624157) Homepage
    At least that's what I learned when the word "Microsoft" is in any of their reports. I would assume that it is that way with everything else too... They're like the Fox News of the tech industry -- it's all about who pays the most.

    • Re:Never trust Gartner on anything... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by multiben ( 1916126 ) on Thursday October 11, 2012 @05:05PM (#41624391)
      You are absolutely correct. Ten years ago I was forced to deal with them on behalf a government agency I worked for. Getting anything useful out of them requires $$$$$$$$$ and more $$$$$$$$$. $90,000 for a single membership to be precise. Or $150,000 for a premium membership. Like most people who get promoted out of tech roles into management, the people I worked for couldn't hand over the cash quick enough for the chance to hear wild and mostly unfounded predictions about the future of IT. It never ceases to amaze me that Gartner have survived this long.

      • These guys monitor supply chains, and they include tables with PCs, which gives their top spot to Apple, the next to HP, and Lenovo comes in third:

        http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/2012-will-bring-new-world-record-pc-shipments [canalys.com]

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          The reality is that what they put out is total bullshit. They should only list manufactures, re-badgers should be totally ignored or put up as a completely separate listing. Who cares how many plastic stick on badges HP versus how many computers Lenovo made especially when HP didn't even make the stick on badges. So goes for Apple and all the rest of the re-badgers. So what are the real numbers, where does ACER, ASUS and even Foxcon et al actual come it.

          It's about time the lies were dropped about reselle

  • As somebody pointed out, they're both really lousy at PCs and sell predominantly to corporate clients. They both use Chinese/Taiwanese components cobbled together in Chinese Factories and then ship them over here. One owns the rights to the old IBM brand and the other owns the rights to the old Compaq and DEC brands, so what's the difference?

    Now if only Lenovo would hire Carly Fiorina as CEO, then we'd see a real battle.. Meg vs. Carly and we could host it on pay per view in the Octagon!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mcmonkey ( 96054 )

      As somebody pointed out, they're both really lousy at PCs and sell predominantly to corporate clients. They both use Chinese/Taiwanese components cobbled together in Chinese Factories and then ship them over here. One owns the rights to the old IBM brand and the other owns the rights to the old Compaq and DEC brands, so what's the difference?

      Completely anecdotal, but I think there's quite a difference. Between my wife and I, we've gone through 8 ThinkPads over the years--IBM and Lenovo. My father-in-law has probably used/owned at least a dozen as an employee and self-employed consultant. Other in-laws, too many to count.

      Why so many? First, we're spoiled Americans and like to upgrade every 2 or 3 years. Second, we've found them to have decent resale value. And third, we keep going back to IBM/Lenovo because we rarely have issues with them.

      • And third, we keep going back to IBM/Lenovo because we rarely have issues with them. To borrow a phrase, they just work.

        I've owned an HP (more than ten years ago), a T42 Thinkpad from the time that Lenovo was taking over, and a new T520. The HP was OK, if a bit fragile. The T42, as you say, just plain works. Damn near bulletproof, never a problem -- and it's been in heavy use for seven years.

        The kindest thing I can say about the T520 is that it's flaky. Cores randomly, sometimes before it's done POSTing. The wireless networking is up and down, up and down -- unless it's just plain down. It's the kind of intermittent be

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tau_Xi ( 958303 )

          And third, we keep going back to IBM/Lenovo because we rarely have issues with them. To borrow a phrase, they just work.

          I've owned an HP (more than ten years ago), a T42 Thinkpad from the time that Lenovo was taking over, and a new T520. The HP was OK, if a bit fragile. The T42, as you say, just plain works. Damn near bulletproof, never a problem -- and it's been in heavy use for seven years.

          The kindest thing I can say about the T520 is that it's flaky. Cores randomly, sometimes before it's done POSTing. The wireless networking is up and down, up and down -- unless it's just plain down. It's the kind of intermittent behavior that you can't get warranty service for because it never reproduces when the technician tests it.

          I bought the T42 because I knew literally hundreds of engineers from semiconductor companies who put hundreds of thousands of miles on theirs every year and they did, indeed, just plain work. And that's just what it did for me until it got too long in the tooth to handle the current workload. But if I could get a halfway modern laptop with the quality of that T42, I'd scrap this Lenovo POS for it in a hartbeat.

          I disagree that you can't get warranty service. I've had many warranty calls where I say it's an intermittent issue, and they send me a prepaid warranty box and say "Check the intermittent box on the form and send it in". Even if it passes their pre-tests, they replace the motherboard anyway. One time, we even sent in the wrong laptop which had NOTHING wrong with it, and they STILL replace the motherboard because we checked the "intermittent" box on the form! Try it and see, I've had nothing but good exp

        • I'll second the notion that Lenovo's are NOT IBM.

          I worked for a company that was a warranty self maintainer for IBM, and then Lenovo Products. The difference was night and day. IBM spent stupid amounts of money to make sure that their laptops could take abuse after abuse after abuse. I've seen anything from candle wax spills to systems run over by cars that would still boot. Lenovo's QA went downhill somewhere around the T400 /R400 Series. We were averaging at least 2 R400 boards a week on just USB tabs Bre

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by mtmra70 ( 964928 )

            I agree with you mostly, but the Lenovo W and T series is pretty solid. It may not be as solid as the T600 and T4x line, their T4xx and W5xx line is really good and blows away anything HP or Dell has to offer.

          • I've used thinkpads exclusively for small business and personal use since the early noughties. In this time I've bought roughly 30 machines every three years, so three or four generations. The ones I had the most problems with were T40-T42, still practically from the IBM stable, but compared to anything else (NEC, Acer, HP) I encountered they were literally streets ahead. The current generation we have is X200-220 and T400 series. I wouldn't touch anything that's Lenovo by Lenovo like the L or W series. Of

          • Servers were mostly IBM's rebadged to Lenovo

            Meanwhile lots of IBM servers have been rebadged from other people, like MSI...

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by aqmxv ( 1469151 )

            Yeah, I'm slow getting to this thread, but I had to reply to this one. Beating on Lenovo because it's not IBM misses some of the spectacular disasters that IBM put out in the last year or so before they sold the ThinkPad brand to Lenovo. We were an all-ThinkPad shop at that time and had great luck with T2x and T3x models. Then we got some T50s They all died within a year due to bad capacitors on the boards. That was at the same time that IBM hard drives were known as DeathStars...

            Lenovo, of course, wan

    • They both use Chinese/Taiwanese components

      You realize Lenovo is a Chinese company right?

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 11, 2012 @05:03PM (#41624367)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Lenovo is the only half-decent manufacturer left (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    That is in the top 10 'manufacturers'. While everybody has cut corners over the years HP, Dell, and others went too far. With falling prices in the lat 15 years even the poor can afford top quality systems. People are realizing that Dell and now HP are shipping crap. IBM/Lenovo has been going downhill all along although the difference is the company has made sure to release slightly better quality products than the rest. So it is no wonder people are going Lenovo.

    Personally I would not buy Lenovo. They ship

  • That makes Apple the largest player

  • Bloatware turds with stupid keys (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Thursday October 11, 2012 @05:37PM (#41624741)
    I don't care if HP computers are made from magic; the bloatware that they come with is intolerable and that stupid cheap "\|" key they put as half of the left shift key is rage inducing.

    A while back I gave my family a very short list of computers that I would help them with. HP is not on that list. They buy something off the list and they are on their own. Sign number one that a computer company hates their users is when they put that crap Norton Trialware on the computer.

    People keep blah blahing about a Post-PC world coming due to tablets and smart phones. I say it all started to die the day that some MBA came up with the business model of selling a computer really cheap and then trying to screw the customer with all he money / time sucking bloatware.

    Another good example of where HP went wrong was with their printer drivers. I print maybe once a month. Thus I don't want the driver running full time in the background. It should be about 3 megs of software that takes my document and prints it. I don't need to manage the print jobs, redirect them, manage supplies, or anything else. These should be optional programs that I could install on say a machine that prints all day long. But no they want me to download 200megs of crap that then installs all kinds of document management crap. This just drives me to make sure that I buy an older used printer that has drivers built into the OS.

    I always laugh at those pictures of Jumbotron screens where a Norton AV subscription reminder has come up mid game but that is not so much the fault of the Jumbotron people as it is the greed of companies like HP.

    But this crap is now creeping into smartphones. Rogers even put McAfee AV on his Android smartphone.

    • I automatically nuke/pave/clean install every machine I buy or work on for relatives.

      It's fast, it's easy, and I don't have to care about what was on it out of the box.

      • Re:Bloatware turds with stupid keys (Score:4, Insightful)

        by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Thursday October 11, 2012 @08:04PM (#41626023)
        I did this in the past but I find that just finding the right version of windows to match their product key is a huge pain. Then you have to start installing drivers from HP and often those drivers come with baggage.

        So I insist that they get a machine that works out of the box. I have a very short list of machines that I will help with. At first they laughed got crap machines and then when they hit even the smallest hiccup like a printer jam I would just say, "Good luck with Google" Otherwise I just go over and start getting annoyed the first time I go to hit the left shift key. Now they spend a few extra bucks get the right machine and oddly call me a whole lot less.

        Call me overly sensitive but if I could repair cars and you bought a Daiwoo I wouldn't fix that either. I would again make a list of cars that are good value and hand that out.

        I use a mac and generally recommend those. I set my mother up with a Linux box (locked down so grandkids don't wreck it). One sister is a Lawyer so I told her to go with Windows as it is inevitable that there will be some Windows only app LawMaster2000 or such. So I am very much the right system for the right job. But when it comes to the machine don't buy it from a company that seems to hate their customers. I find HP machines are like companies that pay minimum wage; they are basically saying if it were legal they would pay even less. HP seems to be saying that if they could get away with it they would sell even worse machines.

    • I just bought my first bilingual keyboard laptop and it is driving me nuts. I'm getting used to the Enter key placement, but that shift key is a pain. I came across this program which lets you remap the bottom-left backslash to shift.

      http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/ [charter.net]

      It isn't perfect. It works well when typing words and paragraphs, but doesn't work for highlighting or some other functions.

    • So don't install the whole HP printer suite. Go download just the print driver and be done with it. Best best is to get a printer with an ethernet port that support tcpip printing which doesn't force you to have usb-only drivers. Uninstall all the crapware they install, or better yet nuke and reinstall from known good sources so you don't even have to worry if it came pre-rooted.

      Personally, bragging that you are elitist about what brands of computers you'll help your family makes you seem like an ass. S

      • Yes elitist like I won't eat food with lead in it or meat that doesn't smell good. It is just that if they won't take my advice and pay less than it would cost for one or two visits to a geek squad and get the right machine then no I won't give my time and years of skill away for free. Going into staples and getting their door crasher special might make them feel good for having save $90 but then they expect me to spend a few hours wiping it of the bloatware and repeated other calls dealing with crap like w

        • I occassionally help some cow-orkers and friends out with their personal computers as well. Usually the problem isn't the pre-installed trialware or hardware faults. It's virus and toolbars, etc. Sometimes I'll take the time to clean it up, and sometimes I tell them just to copy off their data and then restore it with the recovery CD or partition (assuming it has one). When they ask my advice on what to buy, I usually steer towards a decent brand and if possible to buy a few steps up from the bottom of

  • Thinkpad still the best laptop (Score:5, Informative)

    by loufoque ( 1400831 ) on Thursday October 11, 2012 @05:46PM (#41624845)

    I've bought many laptops, and thinkpads, even recent ones, are still clearly the best laptops on the market.
    Great build, great keyboard.
    Pricey, but has all the best hardware possible, and it works well on linux.

    Everything a demanding software engineer might need.

  • Every single one of my Lenovo Laptops kicked ass (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PotatoHead ( 12771 ) <doug.opengeek@org> on Thursday October 11, 2012 @06:20PM (#41625171) Homepage Journal

    All of them. They remain useful until they are completely broken, thrashed, just worn the fuck out dead.

    That's why they are doing well. I pay a lot for mine, run them hard, and when they are behind the curve, they get cycled home for various things, until they finally just don't work, and that process is generally painless too.

    I like the matte black finish. It's not sexy, but it endures way better than the shiny, "please don't scratch it" finishes on so many machines do. Maybe starting out a little less sexy has it's advantages. Black is damn cool in my book, and there is always that little brightly colored something on the machines, sort of like a great tie on an otherwise boring business suit. Perfect.

    The keyboards are a bit noisy, but I like that too. Always have. I can type and type and type until the buttons are all worn, and they just keep going great, no worries.

    Heavy little buggers, if you buy the more powerful ones. If I need to clock somebody with my laptop, Lenovo is there! No worries, and I can probably post to Facebook after doing it too.

    Linux is well supported across most of the machines. I love that. A Think Pad was the first machine I ran OS X on too. Worked amazingly well, and was faster than the Mac I ended up getting soon after. Gotta admit, the touch pad on the Mac is better tho, but not by much. Some Think Pad touch pads need to be worn in. Once that has happened, they work much better. Weird.

    By and large, I leave most of the value added software on the machines. It works well. HP is noisy, Dell just horrible, etc.... I get a competent disc burning kit, defrag tools, etc... Nice package that actually has some real value. On my latest machine they even tossed in the nVidia 3D licenses. Didn't know that, until I connected up to a new TV for some 3D CAD tests. Nice!! That's $14.99 for most of you out there.

    Funny thing is I was not a fan early on. One ended up at the house, and I started using it. By the time I got it, the machine was a bit dated, but damn if it wasn't just great to use. When it outlasted some HP thing or other, I was sold. Typically, I get a top machine for work purposes. Need big RAM / CPU, nVidia, etc... Once it's done, it goes home for micro-controller related projects. Long life cycle on these. Worth it.

    And... matte finish displays that are typically nice, bright, with fine dot pitches. They've wavered a bit on these on some models as of late. Gotta be a bit picky about that, but so has everybody else. Get the better display they offer, and it's no worry.

    The few times I've ordered replacement things under warranty, they shipped 'em, the work wasn't hard. Once the machine ends up at home, I find I can service it much easier than I can the HP machines, which incorporate all manner of fiddly components, glue, buttons that fail, etc... Ugh. Dell sometimes does better, and is in my mind, competitive on this front. Apple? Difficult, but then their stuff works a long time too. Fair game they are playing, but HP is just losing big on this front. Get an HP, and you better hope it works, or service might be very difficult no matter who does it.

    I expected some of this to fade when IBM let go to Lenovo. Very pleased to see they've kept the bar high so far. Hoping they continue.

  • Has Netcraft confirmed it?

  • One day they're at the top, the next day they say they're getting out of the PC business, then they say they were just kidding about that and they're back in the PC business. If I were purchasing equipment for my company, there's no way in Hell I'd buy HP. I'm not buying computers from a company that can't decide whether or not they want to be in the business of selling me computers.

    I saw Apple mentioned above so I'll touch on my feelings about them. They've made it very clear the last few years that the

    • Absolutely right about HP. I wouldn't buy anything from them until they decide what kind of company they want to be and start showing us some of the great products they used to make but somehow lost their way.

      As for Apple I can't quite figure out what they are doing with their laptops these days. I've got a MacBook Pro that's about 4 years old (still running Snow Leopard) and it's hands down the best laptop I have ever owned. But you know what? I don't want to buy a new one. They are nice machines but you c

  • I know a chap who purchased a HP 17" widescreen laptop a few years back. About a month after the warranty expired, HP sent through a BIOS update which bricked the entire machine. He called HP support and said "Your update bricked my laptop" .. support's response "Your machine is out of warranty, that's going to cost $1200 to repair". When you stop caring about your core business to save money or make a little extra cash on the side, well .. there's no turning back. HP have lost the trust.

    • I had a business-class HP 17", an EliteBook no less. It had the QuadroFX die bonding failure. In spite of it having a replaceable video card, HP had no replacement. (If you design a machine with an MXM slot, you are a stupid fuck. What a waste of money. Put the GPU onboard.) HP sent out a contract tech twice. Failed to fix it the first time, machine wouldn't even boot after his second visit. Took over 24 hours on the phone total to get a replacement machine. They sent me a significantly upgraded machine. I

  • Fixing a Lenovo or a thinkpad is a quick buck. Fixing an HP is an ordeal. Why's it have to be so complicated; All I wanted to do was clean the fan!

  • A lot of verbiage to say something simple. Lenovo controls a slightly smaller percentage of the market, but their shipments increased 10% while HP's decreased 16% (info somewhat from memory, read an article about this earlier today). So make your own conclusions. This "not so fast... this other guy says..." nonsense is just silly.

  • It's still not Dell?
  • If this is the case how come I never get any in for repairs? Is the quality better? Are they more popular in commercial industry then in consumer? If thats the case why do I not see any businesses with Lenovo's?

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